October 1, 2025
By James Brook
Abstract: The rise in disposable e-cigarette (vape) use has led to a significant increase in hazardous e-waste and littering, posing serious environmental concerns. These devices are sold for short-term single-use, and nearly always get discarded improperly, contributing to plastic pollution, heavy metal contamination, nicotine contamination, and disaster risk. These factors are intense and immediate within days of improper disposal. Despite growing awareness, effective disposal and recycling capabilities remain limited, exacerbating the environmental impact and calling for a direct policy intervention.
Much has already been said about the dangers of vaping to personal health—but what about environmental health? No matter where you are in the U.S., you're likely familiar with e-cigarette trash littering the streets. Vapes have become almost as pervasive as cigarette butts, used and discarded with little thought—brightly colored plastic devices piling up in ditches, rolling through the streets, crushed into the soil, and washing up on shores.
About a year ago, I began wondering about the chemical impacts of this litter. What contaminants might be leaking from inside those vibrant plastic shells?
E-cigarettes, or vapes, typically consist of a hard plastic casing, a reservoir of e-liquid (usually containing flavorings and nicotine or cannabis), a small lithium-ion battery, a heating element, and other electronic components. Triggered by inhalation, they aerosolize the e-liquid to deliver a chemical hit to the user.
Most vapes sold in the U.S. are single-use, meaning non-refillable and labeled as "disposable". One device lasts the average user anywhere from mere days to a couple weeks (Romeh 2023). This is where my environmental concern stems from: these mass-produced and resource intensive devices are functionally impossible to dispose of in a sustainable way—remaining in the environment for thousands of years despite their short-term use, releasing potentially toxic contaminants all the while.
The e-cigarette disposal problem
E-cigarette devices are small but complex, composed of multiple non-biodegradable materials tightly integrated into a single unit—plastic casings with metal circuits, heating coils, LED lights, sensors, lithium batteries, and e-liquid. This complexity makes them incompatible with standard recycling processes, which are not designed to separate and handle hazardous e-waste components. There is also little incentive for them to develop a process to do so, as the small scale makes it not profitable to recover these materials.
Because vapes contain both a battery and nicotine—classifying them as both electronic and hazardous waste—they fall into a gray area in current waste management systems. This means they escape the more stringent disposal regulations applied to other hazardous waste items like other electronic devices and hazardous wastes. Manufacturers provide no disposal guidance, and most waste facilities won’t accept them. The unfortunate reality is that there’s still currently no widely accepted method for disposing of used vapes sustainably, which may prove to be catastrophic considering the immense scale of the market.
Nearly 11.9 million vapes are sold in the US every month, and Americans throw out more than four every second that passes—not even taking into account the huge market of illicit vapes (Gutterman 2023). As reported by young vape users, 68% of used vapes are thrown in the trash, 13% go into regular recycling bins, and a minimum of 9% get littered outdoors (Truth Initiative 2022). As discarded vapes accumulate in landfills, waterways, and public spaces, their toxic contents begin to seep into the environment—posing profound risks to soil, water, wildlife, and ultimately, human health.
The science of vape waste
Over time, discarded vapes release a myriad of harmful substances into their surroundings, including heavy metals, acids, microplastics, dissolved gases, and residual nicotine. These contaminants readily leach into soil and waterways, poisoning wildlife, disrupting ecosystems, and polluting drinking water sources. Furthermore, the lithium-ion batteries contained inside single-use vapes are immediately dangerous because of their potential to combust, especially in waste transport or processing, a defect that has proven to be destructive and deadly.
Heavy metals are of particular concern due to their persistence and tendency to bioaccumulate. E-cigarette components contain elements such as aluminum, barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, lithium, nickel, silver, tin, thallium, and zinc (Beutel 2021)(Kang 2018). Through a process called leaching, water percolating through disposed vapes can degrade materials and dissolve these elements, carrying them into the environment. Many of these metals—particularly copper, lead, cadmium, and chromium—are potent ecotoxins with long-lasting and often deadly effects (Bååth 1989).
In 2024, while working with the Exposure Science Lab at Michigan State University, I investigated how metals leach from vapes over time. Startlingly, I discovered that significant levels of every element tested began leaching within just a few days after the device became saturated with water (Brook 2024). This means litter prevention should be prioritized over cleanup—though both are important.
But the batteries aren’t the only concern; leftover nicotine in spent e-cigarettes can be highly toxic to insects, plants, and animals (Buetel 2021). Once discarded, highly concentrated residual nicotine leaches out into the environment, poisoning their surroundings. Nicotine was once even used as a common pesticide—before being phased out due to its extreme toxicity. Ironically, nicotine-containing products like vapes and cigarette butts remain among the most commonly littered items worldwide, despite severe restrictions placed on their direct use as pesticides.
The production of e-cigarette components has even more significant environmental consequences. The mass-production and subsequent disposal of plastic casings and packagings for e-cigarettes is an obvious menace, contributing to the growing threat of microplastic contamination and overflowing landfills. Furthermore, Extracting the materials for batteries—especially cobalt, lithium, manganese, and nickel—is a notoriously environmentally destructive industry, as well as a humanitarian nightmare (Brown 2024).
The lithium content of vape batteries is substantial, and the ‘disposability’ of the devices leads to the complete loss of this non-renewable resource, which could be better used in more sustainable sectors such as electric vehicles. For example, we utilize an estimated 23.6 tons of lithium in disposable vapes every year—enough to power over 2,600 electric vehicles—that just gets thrown away in the name of convenience once the vape is dead (Gutterman 2023).
Holding manufacturers accountable
As of today, e-cigarette manufacturers still offer no guidance for disposal of their products. Despite being on the market for decades, there remains no standard approach for handling end-of-life vapes. Currently, the best technique is to carefully dismantle the device, remove the battery, tape over the terminals, and take it to a battery recycler—while delivering the rest to a household hazardous waste facility. But this process is time-consuming, risky, and—frankly—shouldn't be the consumer's burden.
We urgently need to hold e-cigarette manufacturers accountable for the full life cycle of their products, before we are overrun by hazardous e-waste. One way to achieve this is through extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy, that would assign legal responsibility for collection, recycling, and end-of-life management of vapes to the producers (Sin 2023). Essentially, EPR internalizes the burden of waste management and infrastructure costs from local governments and taxpayers to the manufacturers and brands themselves. Ideally, e-cigarette manufacturers would be required to instate vape take-back programs and fund sorely needed advancements in electronics recycling, driving us towards a more sustainable future.
Looking ahead
The immediate chemical impact of vape litter makes preventative action critical. One promising short-term solution is the vape collection and recycling initiative by Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior in Marquette, Michigan. This program provides accessible drop-off points for used e-cigarettes, which are then sent to Battery Recyclers of America for safe handling and material recovery—an encouraging step toward sustainable disposal.
There are many promising solutions to the ever-growing problem of so-called disposable vapes, such as the EPR strategy. The steps forward are multifaceted but clear: we must consider the cradle-to-grave story of an e-cigarette, taking action to reduce production while ensuring safe disposal and proper recycling. The true challenge stands to be bringing attention to the cause and inspiring meaningful policy change. Until manufacturers are held accountable and sustainable disposal and recycling systems are instated, the burdens of e-cigarette waste will continue to fall on the public and the environment. It's time we stop treating e-cigarettes as throwaway conveniences, and start recognizing them as the menace they are.
About the author: James Brook is a recent graduate of Michigan State University, having completed a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Studies and Sustainability. James is passionate about uncovering the environmental consequences of e-cigarette use and led research about the metals leaching potential of e-cigarettes highlighted in this article.
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